Anyone know if it's compatible with Cirle Pad Pro? Thinking about picking one up more for comfort factor than anything though. Presume if it's not compatible you can still play with it attached but right stick won't work?

I'm not entirely sure, but if it doesn't work with a particular game, you have to reach around the circle pads' right shoulder button to get to the consoles' shoulder button, as the circle pad wont respond at all.

The package has a whole bunch of ghosts and boos in the cut-out squares. There is the usual fold-out control explanation with a huge king boo on the front scaring Luigi.

Since I am the only person left in the entire world who reads the manual before starting a game, I glanced through it. Its nice that it has a purple color scheme and pictures of the ghosts for each heading, but I still wish we would get a replacement for the warmth and creativity of proper manuals. I noticed that there seem to be collection elements in the game as there is a separate mode to view it all.

The intro is awesome. It uses 3D extremely well and I love watching the scene where all the friendly ghosts are helping Dr. E Gadd in his lounge. There's so much incidental detail packed into every sign. All the gadgets that E Gadd has going on around him when talking to Luigi are animated so lovingly with quirky bloopy sound effects to boot! The amount of Easter Eggs I spotted in the background was ridiculous for a 2 minute intro. Also, I did not expect movie parodies! But within the intro alone I spotted references to Poltergeist and Tron.

Soooooo many things to do. So many tiny little reactions to O-vacuum. It's nice to have the flashlight, the strobo and O-vacuum all the same machine now. Even though you don't have the robo-tron controls of the original game, they don't suffer for accuracy at all. You can press X to aim up and hold R to tilt the 3DS to get a better degree of precision, but so far I haven't needed to do it to battle ghosts, just to explore to the utmost.

Soooo many secrets so far and I just only completed the first mission! The game gives you separate missions for each mansion and rates you on ghosts trapped, money taken, time to complete and amount of damage taken. It's structured like the 3D Marios, with the mansions being a Zelda-like "dungeon", split up into mission-like "levels." Like Mario, you can repeat missions, but like Zelda you can get access the entire game world if you have the tools to unlock the passages that get there.

The animation is superb and very smooth, from the ghosts taunting, playing around and fluttering when captured to Luigi's many incidental animations (I love how he hums to the entirety of the song, not just one part of it, what attention to detail!) and all the things you can tinker with in the environment. There also special cutscenes that play out in first person as you look around if you examine certain places with the gyroscope on the 3DS and these are great melds of gameplay and storytelling that give hints on how to proceed.

Battling ghosts is a great deal more satisfying than the original because while its still tricky, the controls are better and its not as finicky, upping the overall fun factor of doing it quite a bit. As in the original they put in quite a lot of presentation effort into the spooky haunted mansion tropes so that each encounter with ghosts feels unique to that room.

I'm only at the beginning, but its clear so far that this a great sequel to the original and a vast improvement. Next up, multiplayer!

I have returned...from the NETHER REALMS! I have seen...unspeakable thrillies! I have sucked...more than KIRBY!

Oh, the Great Green One and his adventures are a tricksy sort. I have teamed up with up to three other manifestations of His Greenliness: Bluigi, Pinkuigini and Orangicetto! We have conquered the Terror Tower many times. I even went searching by myself by choosing the path of local play and just not letting anyone into my tortured, awful, gothic world. Leave me alone! For it is my choice to chase and capture phantom dogs on each floor before time runs out. I have even come back from the ghastly experience with gold! Gold to feed my pretty tools so they may evolve into glorious ghost-busting gadgets of gold-wrought gain! In fact, you can do the same when you use your 3DS's ghostly rays to communicate with another spirit in the same room, or download your soul into the 3DSes of others, creating a poltergeist party of four, or send your essence into the ether, that mysterious Wi-Fi to find strangers or friends who will aid our cause.

Lo! There was much laughing to be had as Emperor Emerald and his three friends journeyed up the 5,10 or 25 floors of Terror Tower getting sucked into ectoplasm, burped upon, charged over, sucked into wardrobes without witches or lions, bumped into, had keys stolen from thine person, smashed into walls with doors with a mind of their own, had their vacuums plugged up, slipped on ectoplasmic goo, blown up, shot into the air, sliced and crowded around in an effort to find ghost dogs, escape deadly traps or defeat ghosts. But alas, our projected astral essence could not bear the agony of the Wi-Fi, as each floor had a time limit and we had to work together to scramble to the next and complete the objective the gods shouted from the heavens. Once we were done the gods dropped four red coins into the mansion and we scrambled to collect the four. The gods bestowed a higher chance of a power-up for the next floor on the one who collected their blood-tainted coins from the depths of the greedy man's hell by making the roulette stop on the spirit with the most coins.

I marveled to see there were many, many new ghosts that don't appear in the regular game who haunt the dastardly passageways of the curiously random Terror Towers. It was thrilling and terrifying, I had a bloody good time.

Eventually I fell out of my trance, ended the seance of the dead and returned to my studies of all things astral with the good professor and I found as the story of King Green continued he was bestowed with Darth Merenghi's Dark Light! A curious gizmo that could make disappeared things reappear. This meant, not only were there bronze, silver and gold metals for each level, but a mysterious Boo that could be captured by witty mortals with the foolish gall to track him down, following his ectoplasmic essence throughout the mansion and through walls until they come face to face with the Boo who can make furniture disappear and call upon ectoplasmic balls to protect him, and must be defeated with all the gadgets at The Green Majesty's disposal.

I am afraid I must go now. The ghostly realms are calling...calling...calling collect and I am afraid I must fish for change in the furniture with my vacuum...

Super looking forward to this now. Release day can't come soon enough! The ONM stated that it's about 20 hours long to 100% everything, which means it'll take me at least a couple of months to complete.

According to Next Level games, they started in 2009 and Nintendo didn't even tell them what system it was for. Every time they thought they were done Miyamoto asked them to put more in. He was concerned because the original Luigi's Mansion had complaints that it was too short, but he didn't want it stretched out either. So he asked them to come up with lots of ideas and experiment them over a period of time. The ones that withstood his scrutiny made it into the final game. Apparently, multiplayer also came in on the condition that it be "At least as fun as Mario Kart."

No pressure there! But I'd say they succeeded wildly on that part.

One thing that makes it really addictive is that its quite difficult. It's all co-op, so you're all working toward the goal, but if you lose, its mission failed and back to start again. (If you lose on the boss though, you can get a small consolation prize.) Hunter Towers (where you hunt ghosts) are the easiest, with the Chaser Towers being significantly more difficult and Climber Towers being an absolute bitch. I can't even dream of a 10 level tower, let alone 25 levels!

But its fun to get better and better and work on improving for the team! It's like Nintendo's version of Monster Hunter or something.

Final post for the day. I bought Castlevania too today. I haven't played it yet. I meant too. I kept going back to Luigi's Mansion. (Just one more level. One more Boo. One more medal. One more try at multiplayer.) I'm close to finishing the first mansion and not quite done yet, though I have explored many nooks and crannies (not done by a long shot, since like the 3D Marios the content and what happens in each room changes for each mission, which means something that contained treasure in one mission could be infested with difficult ghosts in the next).

Like I said before, the difficulty of this game is quite high and its quite tricky. Though Professor E Gadd talks you through the game mechanics and gives you mission objectives, other than that the only help you get is an optional thing when you mark your next objective on the map and the game will highlight where it is you need to go. There are no hints for any of the secrets and puzzle solutions accessible in-game that I know of and sometimes its awfully vague ("investigate the suspicion activity," for instance). It feels very much like the old school Zelda games when there were no owls or fairies to guide you to the solutions.

The enemies can be really friggin' hard too. I've tried to win against the first boss two times and no luck. I constantly die on multiplayer against regular enemies (though they are even harder in multiplayer) and its extremely hard to go for a perfect run for a gold metal, especially because you need to balance sucking gold out of non-ghost enemies and doing a special technique to produce gold out of ghosts who usually won't give any. This means setting up perfect opportunities, while sometimes there are over a dozen object flying at you at once.

You know how in beat-em ups often the AI will wait for you to beat up one enemy so it can join the fray? That doesn't happen here, as you bombarded from all angles. One time I had bats descending from the ceiling, ghosts attacks with swords and defending themselves with shields so I couldn't catch them easily, rats traveling the floor making it dangerous to step around, with a couple of other small fry ghosts prancing around and a bigger poltergeist who would disappear into book cases and start throwing several books from SEVERAL directions in the room at once. You do have a B button dodge move while you are trying to suck up things or stun them with your flashlight, but it can sometimes feel like Mario version of Ikaruga. I barely made it through that fight with only 10 hearts left. It was the third mission of the game.

You can start again from a Tron-like surveillance camera if you die only if you find the golden dog bones in a level. Otherwise, its back to the very start. If you know what to do its always a snap and quick to get back to where you were, but it takes considerably longer for a perfect run collecting money and gold and jewels and boos. You have to be on your feet at all times.